Two Men Walk Into A Bar
by Garmonbozia
Summary: One of them turns out to be the sniper. It's not really all that funny. - - One shot, Post-Fall. Many thanks to ResidentBunburyist one more time for correcting an upload error. This time I swear, it's a whole new fic...


John is walking. No more nor less than this. Not thinking, not anything, just walking. And _damn_ proud of himself for managing this much, please and thank you... Place foot, shift weight, move forward and repeat. Walking. It's hard. Really hard. Physically exhausting, matter of fact. Here he is, and hasn't he trekked desert miles with half a hospital on his back, and suddenly a brief and entirely necessary stretch of rainy London is draining him entirely.

_Walking_, though. Walking, and walking is good. Walking, and it's a sight more than some people can do anymore. Good to know he still can.

Ella did nothing for him. Now that it's over he can admit, it was only ever a last resort. He must have been desperate to even book a session again. Doesn't quite remember the sensation, though, the emotion itself. It's gone from him now. But he knows it's only desperation that could have driven him to it. John's not beating himself up for it; there was logic, certainly, in the decision. Being forced to sit down and tell everything, forced to talk about it in his own terms… There'd been police statements to give and all sorts of talks, but there's script for that. Police want hard facts, well-wishers want bland platitudes. But he just thought, just for a second, if somebody really pushed him… But he knows now, that was only desperation.

He knows, even if he doesn't remember it, what that feeling looks like.

His shortest possible route is trying to take him across railway tracks. Listening for trains, looking both ways, that's how he saw the other man. Standing up above him on the bridge, twenty yards down the line. With his arms folded on the rail, hanging over them, looking straight down at gravel and steel rails. No hood, no umbrella, not even his collar turned up against the pelting rain. John gets one look at this person in this pose and knows, he's waiting for a train up there. Maybe not fully committed to the idea yet but flirting with it, certainly.

Still, that's hardly an honest and pressing reason to go up there. The walk up there will be long and arduous. It will hurt. And more than likely, John will get there and the man turns out to be a simple anorak, an all-weather train-spotter who just forgot his brolly. An offended bore is the last thing he needs today. No, he'll cross the tracks and be on his way. Just keep walking. God knows what'll happen if he stops just simply walking.

But by the time he's made the climb up the opposite bank, there's so little of him left he doesn't know if home is within reach. And it's only twenty yards down the line. He's up on a level with the bridge now. Much easier to walk on a level than up the embankment. He can _get_ to the bridge, that's a certainty, and at the moment he's not taking anything less than a certainty.

After all, jumping from three storeys, you have only a thirty per cent chance of dying. But not everybody makes it into that top sixty. No, John's not playing the odds anymore.

So he goes. If he offends the guy he offends him. Leaning on that rail is looking like a more and more inviting option. His leg _aches_. He doesn't remember it being quite so bad before… Before everything. But John will not limp. He won't. Struggles with it, yes, but he does not limp. Walks up and stops by the leaning man.

His new companion mumbles up out of his arms, "Keep moving, mate." A trace Northern accent. Scouse, maybe. "I'm waiting for the five-fifteen and it's already behind time."

"It's not coming," John tells him.

"Nice try."

"It's a bank holiday. Sunday service. Do you think I'd be walking in this if the bus had been coming?" The train-spotter sighs and mumbles curses to himself. But then settles again, right where he was. Waiting for whatever comes next. Even with British Rail what it is, something's bound to come along sometime. "Does it look like a smart option, down there?"

"Turn around and see."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Honestly? I'm a bit scared it'll look like a smart option." That gets a laugh, just a breath of one. John feigns distaste and disapproval, "Oh, you're really not depressed enough for this. You're not even taking this seriously, are you?"

With another long, heavy sigh, the stranger stands up. Tall, when he straightens, a strong, imposing frame. Rain runs down from his waxed bald head down the collar of his jacket and makes him shudder. Then, quite nonchalant, "Not yet. But things come in threes."

"I don't follow," John says. Part of him adds, _And why should I?_ What business is this of his? Why should it matter, why should he understand or even try to, what's he doing on this bridge… But it all strikes him as being a bit too late to ask. Anyway, he's doing well, so far; he got the man to turn around, didn't he? Why stop now?

"I mean, two weeks ago, the best friend I ever had went and topped himself." John shuts down. Everything just stops. If he weren't leaning on the rail it would be much, much more obvious that his leg has just gone from beneath him. Two weeks. Best mate. Topped himself. Now, it can't be the person John is thinking of, because the world doesn't allow for that sort of ridiculous in-folding. But just the circumstances are coincidence enough to bring everything to a complete stop. The stranger, however, caught up in his own miseries, misses all of this, continues, "And last week, the _oldest_ friend I had, since we were barely crawling both of us, she took off somewhere, just bloody vanished, never said a word."

"So your rule of three… you think something else is coming."

"No. I think we were a three and I'm only one. Which should be telling me something. I can't figure out if it's superstition or just common sense."

"No offence," John says, stuffing his hands into his pockets, "and I swear this isn't a proposition either, but would you rather figure it out over a pint somewhere? It's raining a bit…"

The stranger considers, courteously, then shrugs, "Well, if there's no trains coming…"

John moves to get the first round in, but the other man won't hear of it. "Least I can do," he says, which sounds curiously balanced, to John's ear. He's beginning to wonder just how much resolve there could have been, in that long vigil at the bridge. But then again, that's callous, isn't it, questioning how much somebody really wanted to jump…

The possibly-spineless stranger comes back with the drinks. Setting them down, he looks closely at John for just a moment. Says, "I'm sorry to do this to you but-"

"Read the papers? Watch the news? Because that's where you know me from."

"I avoid all that, if I'm honest. I travel for work. Unless something stops the planes taking off, it doesn't affect me. But that's probably where I've seen your face."

Sticking out a hand, "John Watson."

The stranger shakes, but his face falls. "Blogger fella. I… I _couldn't help_ but hear about… I was sorry. Sounded like a decent bloke." But he doesn't read the papers. Must have missed all that fraud business. John can take the compliment, he really can, but he's all too aware that this could have been different. "…Jesus, here I'm stood talking about my-"

"Oh, no, that wasn't what I meant."

With a wry smile, "Just a shite summer all over, isn't it?"

"Say that and we'll leave it at that." This was a mistake. They get through most of the first pint in a silence that stops _just_ short of uncomfortable. It's the borderline tenseness or the long day or the alcohol or all of the above, but John speaks, says something almost as though he can't help it. "Don't jump," he says. Too quick, a little too much heart in it. Nothing to do with this stranger anymore. "Seriously. Whatever you decide, in the end, that doesn't matter to me, but just don't jump. It's messy and uncertain. Swallow strychnine, or a bullet, but do something sure. Something quicker, cleaner. Don't overdose, don't hang. Don't jump."

"That your professional opinion, Doctor?" And this is said with a calm, knowing earnest, so that neither of them can help but smile, and each lifts his glass to drain it, ready for another. "Anyway, the bullet's right out. It's that rule of three again, see. I would make it two out of three, and then that other moody cow, wherever she is, that leaves her holding a pistol and trying to-"

John is almost laughing; "Trying to figure out if it's superstition or just common sense." He takes the glasses back to the bar. Standing. Standing, he notices, strongly, and with a minimum of pain. Doing alright, apparently, except for the oversensitivity of his psychosomatic reflexes. And talking like a doctor of course, he thinks, smiling. After all, he _must_ have been talking like a doctor; he never mentioned his occupation to this new friend, did he?

Two weeks. Best mate. Topped himself. Swallowed a bullet. Doctor.

So, evenly, without overreacting, without any visible sign of any rapidly building rage that may or may not be growing inside him, John carries two new pints back to the table. Takes his seat again. Squares himself with the stranger, who had immediately set into his drink, and waits for him to notice. And once he's absolutely sure he has the man's full attention, he asks in small careful syllables, "This friend of yours, the dead one. What was his name?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Alright, then, we'll skip the investigative crap and go straight to the end. _Your_ name. Is it Sebastian Moran?"

The stranger drinks deeply, would appear to think about leaving. Then swallows it all down and says, "Yeah."

Perfectly still, refusing to shake with pure, blind fury, the way he wants to, "You pretended you didn't recognize me."

"No. Just didn't recognize your voice. I never looked at you til we got here… You were talking me off a bridge, after all. I was awful afraid you'd be warm and understanding and then I'd _really_ want to jump…"

Like desperation, like an ache, Moran is something else John doesn't remember. But all the same, he knows him. He knows he was hit over the head in an alley once, and strong hands lifted him into a cab, and when he came round he'd been fitted with the bomb jacket and could smell a public swimming pool. He knows that any time he felt that keen, sharp sting, sensing the eye that watched him down a laser sight, it was only one of Mycroft's lot about half the time. And John knows there was a rifle trained on him as he stood numb and disbelieving on the pavement outside Bart's and stared up at Sherlock falling, almost too slow to be real, too ridiculous to be real, too anything but just, please, oh God, impossible somehow, please…

"Before you even get started," Moran says, "I wasn't there. This doesn't make it better, I know, but the second I saw Jim reach for that gun… I'd've shot Holmes. Don't hate me for that, it's not personal. It just would have been the only way to put a stop to it. I wasn't there. He sent me halfway across town, back to that stupid bloody swimming pool. And worse, I _went_, like a twat… And the other one, the woman, she was out of the country. He sent her to Paris to rob a 'tartan painting'. Naturally she couldn't find it. Got stuck between a Derwatt and a deep blue Seaton at the Louvre… I know this doesn't help, at all, but-"

"No buts. You're right; it doesn't help."

Moran. Sebastian Moran. In his mind, John can't stop just _saying_ it. _Sebastian Moran_. Moriarty's right hand and he talked him _out_ of jumping. He bought him a _drink_, for the love of God.

But somehow, maybe it's only shock, but the anger goes away. All he manages now, "You didn't _say_ anything."

"What, to him? Or… today? No, I didn't say anything to you."

"Why not?"

"Would you have spoken to me? Or would you have pushed me, because that crossed my mind and all… Jumping in front of a train is one thing, lying on the tracks with a broken neck for four hours waiting for it is quite another."

It hadn't crossed John's mind, not until just now, but it's not a bad image, all over. Nothing he'd ever genuinely consider, of course, but not a bad image. A thought, not an action, but a safe, comforting thought. Remembering, though, who he's sitting with, and what the man is capable of, all he says aloud is, "That doesn't really answer the question."

Moran struggles. Runs a big, sinewed hand twice over his head, having to put something abstract and emotional into concrete terms. "I thought you might… _know_ something, something I don't. Like, about what you do when somebody like that goes out of your life."

"Don't compare them." Moran had barely finished speaking when John answered him. "Don't even think about them in the same terms, don't dare. I don't care who you are or what you've done, don't _dare_ talk about them like they're comparable, at all."

"Maybe I'm making a hash of this," Moran says, pinching the bridge of his nose. "You're telling me Holmes never thought of Jim as-?" Equal. He's going to say equal. That, and the cold, distant 'Holmes' and the simple familiarity of 'Jim', John doesn't want him to finish. He shakes his head from that second and Moran knows better. Stops himself. Then, "I'm making a hash of this." He fishes a ten pound note out of his pocket and puts it on the table, under the edge of his half-empty glass. "These're on me. Thanks for your time, Doctor Watson."

He stands then, lifts his sodden jacket from the back of his chair. He's already halfway to the door when John turns in his seat; "Moran." Who only turns and doesn't want to speak, run the risk of causing further offence. "Try just walking. Long as you can. Physical distracts from the mental."

Moran half-smiles. "I did try that. So did you. Look where we both ended up."


End file.
